Secretary of State Mike Pompeo closed the door on what could have been a graceful exit from the White House, announcing on the Today show that he would not be running for the Kansas Senate seat in 2020. “I love Kansas. I’m going to be the Secretary of State as long as president [Donald] Trump gives me the opportunity to serve as America’s senior diplomat,” Pompeo said during his Thursday morning appearance. “I love doing what I’m doing, and I have 75,000 great warriors out and around the world trying to deliver for the American people.” He added, definitively: “It’s ruled out.”

Speculation that Pompeo was eyeing an exit peaked in late January, when reports emerged that Mitch McConnell had spoken to him about running for the retiring Pat Roberts’s seat. At the time, Pompeo seemed to be seriously considering it: he was reportedly scheduled to meet with veteran G.O.P. strategist Ward Baker, and hesitated to rule out the possibility during an interview on Fox News. “Lots of folks have reached out to me and suggested I ought to do it,” he told Martha MacCallum. “I have suggested to them that I have a very full plate as Secretary of State, and I intend to keep doing this so long as President Trump will commit to it.” (Trump did, in fact, commit to it, going so far as to tellFace the Nation that reports of recruitment efforts were “fake news,” but admitting that McConnell had indeed reached out. “Well, he may have spoken to him, but I think [Pompeo] loves being Secretary of State. He’s doing a fantastic job,” Trump said. “And I asked him the question the other day; he says he’s absolutely not leaving.”)

Pompeo, who served as a congressman from Kansas before joining the Trump administration as C.I.A. director, was widely seen as a sure bet for Roberts’s seat—a comfort to Republicans, who lost both a Kansas House seat and the governorship in the midterms, the latter by 5 points. If he does remain on the sidelines, the G.O.P. will have to find someone else who can make headway in what some see as an increasingly toss-up state.

Pompeo’s decision may endear him to Trump, who sees Pompeo as one of his most dogged allies, and whose White House has largely failed to attract even remotely qualified candidates. His State Department employees, however, will likely be less pleased. As my colleague Abigail Tracyreported, staffers already chafing under Pompeo’s pro-Trump bent became infuriated when he made them work through the shutdown without pay. “Unfortunately, the kind of cynical predictions at the outset have proven themselves to be not necessarily cynical but to be perceptive and accurate,” said one senior State Department official at the time. “Where [Rex] Tillerson just eschewed the expertise of the building, Pompeo acts like he cares but doesn’t actually listen to people or care to.”